Finalists have been selected for the 2016 Amnesty International Australia Media Awards by six independent panels of judges.
The awards celebrate excellence in human rights reporting by journalists whose work exposes the injustice of abuse, both in Australia and abroad.
The shortlisted finalists across the six categories are:
Indigenous Reporting
- ‘Bowraville’: Dan Box, Stephen Fitzpatrick, Eric George (prod.), The Australian
- ‘WA’s Stolen Wages Shame’: Sarah Dingle, ABC Background Briefing
- ‘The Extra Mile’: Bridget Brennan, ABC Background Briefing
- ‘Mark Haines Cold Case’: Allan Clarke, Buzzfeed
Print/Online
- ‘Australia’s Chinese Political Prisoner’: Rowan Callick, The Australian
- ‘Lives in Limbo’: Ben Doherty, The Guardian Australia
- ‘Suffer the children: Trouble in the Family Court’: Jess Hill, The Monthly
- ‘We are the Forgotten People’: Abdul Karim Hekmat and Ben Doherty, The Guardian Australia
Photography
- ‘Crisis in the Balkans’: David Maurice Smith, The Sydney Morning Herald and The Guardian Australia
- ‘The Man on the Operating Table’: Andrew Quilty, ABC Foreign Correspondent
- ‘Standing Tall’: Eddie Jim, The Age
Television
- ‘Afghanistan – Surgical Strike’: ABC Foreign Correspondent
- ‘Australia’s Shame’: Caro Meldrum-Hanna, ABC Four Corners
- ‘Hitting Home’: Sarah Ferguson, Nial Fulton, Ivan O’Mahoney, In Films Pty Ltd & ABC
- ‘Bad Blood’: Geoff Thompson, ABC Four Corners
Radio
- ‘The Extra Mile’: Bridget Brennan, ABC Background Briefing
- ‘The news “It’s a girl”, still unwelcome in some cultures in Australia’: Pallavi Jain, SBS Radio
- ‘Sis we’ve got your back’: Bronwyn Adcock, ABC Background Briefing
- ‘Voices from inside besieged Syria’: Sophie McNeill, Fouad Abu Gosh (prod.), ABC Radio National
Cartoon
- ‘Door’: Glen Le Lievre, Sydney Morning Herald
- ‘The long road to Rome’: David Pope, The Canberra Times
- ‘Wolves Everywhere’: Christopher Downes, The Mercury
These quality submissions were chosen from a field of entries that covered a wide range of issues in Australia and all around the world. Among them were powerful and eye-opening stories of family violence, youth justice, #Blacklivesmatter, press freedom and the effects of the wars in Afghanistan, Syria and elsewhere, including the plight of refugees seeking safety in Australia and overseas.
The judges noted the high quality of reporting and production among the entries, and excellent coverage not just of well-known subjects, but also of previously hidden human rights issues.
“The media awards bring attention to the many ways human rights matter to people’s lives every day,” said Karen Trentini, Amnesty International Australia’s Media Manager.
“They celebrate the courage of those enduring human rights abuses, as well as acknowledge the courage and tenacity of the journalists who choose to cover difficult stories, often requiring extraordinary perseverance to bring the full detail of an abuse to light.”
Winners will be announced at an awards ceremony in Sydney on 21 November.
